An Impromptu Uprising: Ethnographic Reflections on the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey

by Umut Yıldırım and Yael Navaro-Yashin

This Hot Spot addresses the anti-government protests that first sprang up in Gezi Park, Taksim, in Istanbul in the summer of 2013, and later spread to much of Turkey. The brief articles presented here each approach this uprising from a different angle, trying to decipher the new social forms Gezi Park generated. These unprecedented protests pushed anthropologists to think “outside the box” in their efforts to understand the event, moving beyond older frames of analysis. The series editors, Umut Yildirim and Yael Navaro-Yashin, each provide an introductory editorial.